Here’s an interesting problem with data analysis in general, and so, by extension, data journalism: you have to be careful about assuming that the numbers you’ve got access to… really do reflect the underlying phenomena you’re trying to investigate.

Hi there, just back from Glastonbury, here’s my column from last Saturday. The Guardian didn’t take it, they said it was too soon to be critical of a Guardian journalist after the column on fish oil, and the issue was too technical. I’m not prone to melodrama, so I don’t see this as a big thing, but I was a bit baffled by the insistence on experiencing this column as critical, when it’s not written that way, and I don’t think it reads that way either. Read the rest of this entry »

“Fish oil helps schoolchildren to concentrate” was the headline in the Observer. Regular readers will remember the omega-3 fish oil pill issue, as the entire British news media has been claiming for several years now that there are trials showing it improves school performance and behaviour in mainstream children, despite the fact that no such trial has ever been published. There is something very attractive about the idea that solutions to complex problems in education can be found in a pill. Read the rest of this entry »